Review: How To Dance With a Duke – Manda Collins (NOR)

How To Dance With a Duke by Manda Collins
Series:  Ugly Ducklings #1
Release Date:  January 31, 2012
Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press
Page Count:  400
Source:  Night Owl Reviews
Buy the book at: Amazon 

What’s a wallflower to do when she’s suddenly in need of a husband? Use all the pluck and moxie she can muster to get what she wants… Miss Cecily Hurston would much rather explore the antiquities of Egypt than the uncharted territory of marriage. But the rules of her father’s exclusive academic society forbid her entrance unless she weds one of its members. To clear her ailing father’s name of a scandalous rumor, Cecily needs to gain admission into the Egyptian Club—and is willing to marry any old dullard to do it. Lucas Dalton, Duke of Winterson, is anything but dull. He’s a dashing and decorated war hero determined to help Cecily—even if that means looking the other way when she claims the dance card of Amelia Snow, this season’s most sought-after beauty. But Lucas has a reason for wanting Cecily to join the Egyptian Club: His brother went missing during one of Lord Hurston’s expeditions to Egypt. An alliance with the explorer’s bluestocking daughter could bring Lucas closer to the truth about what happened…or it could lead him to a more dangerous love than either he or Cecily could have imagined….

A NIGHT OWL REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW 
Reviewed by: Shannschoice

Cecily Hurston is on a mission. She needs to locate her father’s travel journals from his latest expedition to Egypt in order to translate them for him. Her father was struck down apoplexy on the voyage home from Egypt, so Cecily has decided that she should translate them for him despite how much he despised her being an educated woman. With her father’s assistant, Will Dalton, missing, there is no one left to document the journey. So it’s while being thrown out of the Egyptian Club when she meeting the Duke of Winterson, Lucas Dalton. And while she’s decided she needs to marry a man to gain entrance to the Egyptian Club, she needs a man who can be easily controlled and Lucas Dalton is not such a man.

Lucas is intrigued with Miss Hurston, but as soon as he finds out who she is, he accuses her father of being the cause of his brother being missing and storms away. He soon realizes he needs Miss Hurston in order to determine what exactly happened to his brother on that expedition to Egypt. Devising a plan, he tracks Cecily down at the Duke and Duchess of Bewle’s ball where he finds her “stolen” dance card full with members of the Egyptian Club. But Lucas, a decorated war hero, won’t let a little thing stand in his way when he wants something. And suddenly he wants Cecily Hurston for more than help finding his brother.

This story was a vivid reminder of why I love historical romances. It was engaging with characters that seems to leap off the page at you.

Cecily seemed happy with her life, even if it was as a bluestocking wallflower. But she was very good at hiding her hurts from everyone…including herself sometimes. But when she meets Lucas, he unwittingly starts breaking down the walls that Cecily had erected around herself. He was charming, sarcastically annoying and many times called her out when he knew she was up to something (and he was generally the only one that figured out she was up to something). He was not at all the type of man she wanted for herself, but she found herself drawn to him all the same.

Lucas knew on a primal level that he wanted Cecily, but he almost had himself convinced that this was not the time to go down that road with a woman. He had to find his brother. But the more time he spent with Cecily and the more his protective male side came out wanting to claim HIS woman. While he knew Cecily was holding herself back from him, he kept engaging her and showing her that he was the type of man that she needed…not matter what she thought.

The intrigue in the story was a great addition to the romance between Cecily and Lucas (which at times had you so engaged you didn’t care what happened in Egypt!!), leaving you guessing at the villain, changing your mind and the changing it again since it seemed everyone was involved.

This is an excellent debut by Manda Collins that has me desperate for the next book in this trilogy.

 Nov 17, 2011 | 9780312549244
This review was originally published on Night Owl Reviews and can be accessed by the link above.